This paper presents a software framework providing a platform for parallel and distributed processing of video data on a cluster of SMP computers. Existing video-processing algorithms can be easily integrated into the framework by considering them as atomic processing tiles (PTs). PTs can be connected to form processing graphs that model the data flow of a specific application. This graph also defines the data dependencies that determine which tasks can be computed in parallel. Scheduling of the tasks in this graph is carried out automatically using a pool-of-tasks scheme. The data format that can be processed by the framework is not restricted to image data, such that also intermediate data, like detected feature points or object positions, can be transferred between PTs. Furthermore, the processing can optionally be carried out efficiently on special-purpose processors with separate memory, since the framework minimizes the transfer of data. Finally, we describe an example application for a multi-camera view-interpolation system that we successfully implemented on the proposed framework.

Date Published: 26 February 2007
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 6496, Real-Time Image Processing 2007, 64960B (26 February 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.704079

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6496:
Real-Time Image Processing 2007
Nasser Kehtarnavaz; Matthias F. Carlsohn, Editor(s)